Do You Know What My Karen Time Is?

Workout date: 11/6/16

Danielle had asked me earlier in the week if I wanted to meet up on Sunday to practice for Brawl In The Fall and I told her sure.  Did I realize that classes were being held in the annex?  Of course not.  Would I still have agreed to it if I knew that fact?  Probably.  I'm a sucker like that.  But there's not much to like about working out in the annex.  There's never enough room.  Never enough equipment. It's great that we have an extra space to work out in when training courses are being held in the main gym, but most of the time I would prefer to stay home and work out there.  That wasn't really an option for Brawl practice, so to the annex I went.

There were 5 of us that were going to be practicing for the Brawl: me and Danielle, LC and Keithie (they're competing in the RX division), and Ashley.  Ashley's partner, Mike C, wasn't able to make it on Sunday, so Ashley decided she would be my twin during the one event that we tested out.  That event was the following:

"Basic Bitch" (seriously, that's the name of the event)
10 deadlifts (185/135)
20 KB swings (53/35)
30 wall balls (14/10 to 10'/9')

That was the scaled version of the event.  In the RX version, the deadlift weights are 275/185 and the wall ball weights are the typical 20/14.  When I saw Keithie's barbell loaded up with 275 pounds on it, I felt terrible for him.  I had attempted several rounds of this workout on my own on Monday and 10 deadlifts with 185 pounds wasn't easy.  I couldn't imagine how badly I'd be hurting with 90 additional pounds on my barbell.

There were a ton of things that we needed to work out due to the fact that we were in the annex and because we had an odd number of people.  I already mentioned that Ashley was my twin, which meant that whenever I was working, she was working (using Danielle's weights).  In these workouts, only one of the two teammates can work at a given time, so Danielle's weights were free for Ashley to use whenever I was working.  We used the pull-up rig as our designated tag-in/tag-out station in order to get a feel for what that will be like during the actual event next weekend.

In terms of how the annex affected our setup, Keithie originally rotated the barbells that he and LC were using so that they were perpendicular with ours, figuring that would save some much needed space.  But after looking it over, he turned them parallel once again.  Keithie and I would be back-to-back and fairly close to one another, but once the workout began, it was clear that we had more room than we thought and wouldn't bump into one another.  The other issue was the wall balls.  The annex had no 10 pound balls.  There were two 14 pound balls and two 20 pound balls.  LC was using a 14 pound ball and Keithie needed a 20 pounder.  I asked Danielle if she was okay with using a 14 pound wall ball.  She let me know it wasn't a problem at all.  She loves wall balls.  She even looked at me and asked "do you know what my Karen time is?"  I did not.  In fact, I'm not sure I know what my Karen time is.  With Danielle confident that she could handle 14 pounds for this workout, I was left to figure out what I would use.  My first instinct was to be super wimpy.  (Surprise!)  I thought about asking LC to use the 20 pound ball (she loves wall balls and was on an RX team after all) so I could use the 14 pound ball.  Then I said screw it and decided I'd take my chances with the 20 pound ball.  It went alright.  For a while.

I'm not sure what strategy LC and Keithie used, although I know they split up the deadlifts 5 and 5 each round.  It also looked like whoever did the final 5 deadlifts went right into the KB swings.  Maybe that was the way to go, but I thought the deadlifts were quick enough that it wasn't worth switching in the middle of the 10 reps.  If I had 275 pounds on my barbell, I'd probably feel differently.  The game plan I came up with for me and Danielle was to have Partner 1 do all 10 deadlifts.  They tag in their partner for 10 KB swings, and then Partner 1 is tagged back in for the other 10 KB swings.  Same deal on the wall balls, with Partner 2 doing the first 15 and Partner 1 cleaning up the rest.  The next tag would put partner 2 on the 10 deadlifts and everything continues on in that fashion.  It was going to take 2 minutes (or more when we got tired) to complete a round, so 7 rounds would be a very good score.

I tried to ignore LC and Keithie during this workout because they were using RX standards and because they are beasts, but we were in such close proximity that it was hard not to notice where they were along the way.  They would end up doing more than me and Danielle, but not a lot more, most likely because our lighter deadlifts gave us a chance to catch up.  As for my team, Danielle didn't seem to struggle much at all.  Neither did my twin, who is also in better shape than me.  Towards the end of the 15 minutes, Ashley was finishing her sets several seconds before me.

The weak link (as expected) was me.  After 3 rounds, I looked at the clock and saw nearly 6:30 had elapsed on the clock.  We weren't even halfway done and I was in trouble.  I tried to stay upright, avoiding my favorite resting position (the squat) and holding on to the pull-up rig for support.  The deadlifts weren't so bad for me.  The KB swings required more and more grunting as the rounds rolled on, but I got through those.  The wall balls were the worst.  I guess I should take solace in knowing that my ball will only weigh 14 pounds at the competition, but doubt crept into my head fairly early on about whether I could do sets of 15 reps the entire 15 minutes.  In round 6, I finally broke.  I did 8 reps and then had to let the ball drop.  My shoulders were fried.  I took a short break, then picked up my ball again.  In order to get the last 7 reps to the 10 foot mark, I had to jump during each rep, but I got the ball above the mark every time.  There wasn't much time left when we got to round 7.  I did the 10 deadlifts and Danielle got 9 KB swings in before time was called.  Final score: 6+19.

That wasn't a horrible score and it will almost certainly go up with lighter balls at the competition.  7 rounds seems very feasible.  The only problem was how drained I felt at the end of it.  We'll get 2.5 hours to recover between events at the competition and I might need all of it for the event that follows this one as that will be very shoulder-intensive as well.

There wasn't enough room in the annex to attempt that next workout and neither of us felt the need to go over the rowing/shoulder-to-overhead workout that will conclude the competition.  So Danielle and Ashley worked on their cleans while I tried to offer Dave advice (translation: I'm not sure what to do, but I certainly know what not to do).  Neither of them felt comfortable doing squat cleans, so I tried to help them with that.  The two of them spent a considerable amount of time alternating between barbells that I had loaded up with different amounts of weight.  I would say Danielle looks a little more comfortable doing a squat clean, which will allow her to go after heavier weights.  On the other hand, Ashley is probably slightly stronger.  She did one clean where the barbell didn't hit her body at all, yet she got it to her front rack without much of a problem.  The end result was that they both cleaned 125, but were unable to clean 135.  Each of them was very close to getting 135 though and I'm sure they will hit get that weight in the very near future.  Perhaps next Saturday?  I wouldn't be surprised.

Monday preview: It is the return of the workout that broke me and made me leave Crossfit for 5 weeks.  Yes, the fight will go bad one last time for 2016.  But this time I go from punching bag to counter-puncher.